but then we'd have allies instead of enemies in the mid-east

“An Iranian offer to help the United States stabilize Iraq and end its military support for Hezbollah and Hamas was turned down by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003,” Lawrence Wilkerson, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told BBC last night. “We thought it was a very propitious moment to (strike the deal),” Wilkerson said, “But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the vice president’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil’…reasserted itself.”

(Think Progress)